Even A-list actors — who often feel their work speaks for itself — go through the stomach-churning Hollywood audition process for particularly juicy roles. Here are some tales of tricks, random acts of nudity, and peculiar challenges (fake blood?) that actors in Oscar-nominated films have undertaken in key auditions.

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Cuba Gooding Jr.

Cuba Gooding, Jr., buck-naked. Gooding readily flashed his rear assets in his Oscar-winning performance as Rod Tidwell in "Jerry Maguire" (1996). He was game from day one, when he dropped his pants in the audition and also hollered to Tom Cruise, "I love black people, do you?" Oddly, male nudity hasn't caught on: Thomas Haden Church dropped his trousers in his audition for has-been actor Jack Lapate in "Sideways" (2004), but "he was the only actor we talked to who took his clothes off for the audition," producer Michael Lond told the New York Post. "And if a guy's going to get naked for a part, you've got to pay attention to him." Church also got an Oscar nom — which should be a lesson to men everywhere.